Night Drive

I rather enjoyed the complexities and moral dilemmas of Primer (2004), which was shot on Super16 for only $7K.

This is a more polished, still yet 'indie,' title that takes some of those same aspects, and puts them to a more interesting, polished and straight-forward story.

The character development is excellent, and the build up quite interesting. It's also short at under 80 minutes without credits, and really no longer than it needed to be.

I won't say this movie is awesome all the way through. There were some sequences where things dragged a little, and I started to wonder if I was even going to be able to finish it. BUT - I thought it redeemed itself by the end, which is very rare. I ended up enjoying where they went with it. It is clearly low budget, but that didn't really hurt it. They had an interesting enough story to overcome the limitations. The only other problem I had with the story was the main character's acting, which is a pretty big part of the movie. I got the feeling he was the director's friend or something, not a real actor. The girl who played Charlotte was the one who kept things interesting. If it wasn't totally original, at least it was something a little bit different and worth a watch.

AJ Bowen - not sure if I can call him King of the Weird, but he sure has done a lot of strange movies. Now strange does not have to be a bad or a good thing particularly. And you may feel like some of his efforts are a miss and some (more) are actually hits. I don't know if you would call this a hit - but it's quite interesting to say the least.

And while we may expect a couple of things to happen here ... there is a twist that you can not see coming. Unless you have read some spoilers elsewhere of course. Don't do that though - you'll ruin the fun you could have. The ending is either intriguing too or a bit of dissapointment I guess. I liked it.

It started off interesting, albeit slow, and the more interesting it got, the more the plot holes began to surface, until finally it entered ridiculous territory, and I'm not talking about the big reveal - that was a nice touch, but - for example, there was zero need for any of the digging and burying if the (no spoilers) was to be used. This film even at a mere 79 min runtime was too long, too slow and too dragged out for the minimal content and basic narrative it had. It would've been better as a short film. It was however well shot and well acted, specifically newb actress Sophie Dalah, who's performance was the most convincing of them all.

I would say go by pretty much what other positive reviewers have said here. You have a very clever little story which creates a very palpable sense of Mystery. You truly wonder what the hell is going on, along with our befuddled protagonist.

If the writing were not as sharp, I don't know if the story would have been nearly as effective. At first, you might think that the 'suitcase' is just a McGuffin (as in the outstanding and unusual 1955 Noir Classic 'KISS ME DEADLY' by Robert Aldrich - Isn't that just THE greatest title!) But, not giving anything away, by the end you actually do know what is going on.

The interplay between the characters is really what makes this movie shine. They both are quite good. At first, it kind of has a slightly similar tone to the also excellent Scorsese film 'AFTER HOURS', but far simpler and much more stripped down without all the Surreal characters and situations.

The idea of the story I feel is quite clever, and the way it is told is actually very straightforward and simple. But, when you get to the end, it has a nice punch. I'm NOT going to give away a certain element that is in this film because I see how it is listed Genre-wise and I don't want to spoil it. But, I will say that in all my profound cleverness I did guess somewhat along the lines of what was happening : )

So, if you like a nice, short, clever, sometimes humorous, fast paced Crime/Thriller, but with a very Mysterious twist, most definitely give this one a go!